Comments on: Not Even Jesus Would Forgive What You Do

By: Mile23

Mile23 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:22:32 +0000

This memo reminds me of the scene in ‘Brazil’ when we meet the receptionist in the torture department. She’s a very happy cherubic woman who is very nice and charming, and when she takes the dictaphone headset off, we can hear screaming coming through. We see the transcription she is typing, and it reads, “AAAHHHGG! NO! NO! STOP! I’LL TELL YOU ANYTHING!”

She says something like, “He’ll be with you in a minute, dear.” And then she gets back to transcribing, a smile on her face, not a care in the world.

By: DrZen

DrZen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:58:54 +0000

robspierre, I have to disagree. I don’t think you understand the mental disruption being forced to sit shackled on a chair for a week (A WEEK!), unable to get comfortable enough to sleep, with nothing to look at and, one presumes, bright lights and rock music 24/7 would cause your “hardened ideologue”. And a phobic reaction is not something you can control. For an arachnophobe to be locked in a coffin with a spider! Yeah, I suppose that if you knew to expect it, you could train yourself to withstand it, but when he was learning to withstand interrogation, he would have learnt to defeat things like the Reid method, physical assaults and deprivation techniques to a point, but all of them, all the time, for months?

By: robspierre

robspierre — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:57:12 +0000

I’m fascinated–and repelled–by the loving attention to detail in these memos, the gloating over the exact specifics of the insect to be used, the vicariously imagined mental state of the victim, and the like. This is not a legal opinion. It is not policy. It is pornography. Perversion. de Sade.

I can’t imagine this working against any reasonably hardened ideolog. It isn’t remotely practical. Instead, there is something childish and experimental about it. The kind of imagination revealed by these documents is that of those prepubescent hoodlums that try to find ever more exotic ways to torment bugs (using magnifyng glasses, matches, staging fights between them, etc.). Only this time, the adults seem determined to NOT tan anyone’s backside and pack him off to therapy.

By: Teddy Partridge

Teddy Partridge — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:05:48 +0000

Jay Bybee: Still on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Still.

Just sayin’

By: earlofhuntingdon

earlofhuntingdon — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:50:51 +0000

The frequency of the memos suggests an obsession with torture, nominally to obtain essential information. But as the Stanford experiments showed, it becomes a norm and an end in itself. The “system” in which it operates begins to castigate and ostracize those not with the program.

The dark side Cheney let loose was his own inner self. He said, “Let there be darkness” and it was so. Mr. Obama wants to shine his light only upon those things already in the light. How weak is his bulb?

By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D.

Kirk James Murphy, M.D. — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:20 +0000

Evil. Pure evil.

Thanks for this post and your coverage, Spencer.

By: Spencer Ackerman

Spencer Ackerman — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:29:43 +0000

Absolutely. I was talking around our virtual FDL watercooler about Room 101. Glad you made this point.

By: Blub

Blub — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:25:14 +0000

stuffing someone into a box with bugs isn’t just torture. Its Pit and the Pendulem medieval drama-queen torture undertaken by imbeciles who draw all of their life lessons from TV and video games. If they won’t prosecute these people as war criminals, may I suggest that they commit them as psychopaths. There must be something in the DSM that can be used to justify the commitment of people who would do this sort of thing.

By: timtimes

timtimes — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:23:51 +0000

Who authorized the torturing of the testicles of toddlers in an effort to get their parent’s compliance?

That’s the SMOKING GUN memo.

Jesus loves him some little children.

Enjoy.

By: DrZen

DrZen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:22:50 +0000

You know, they never would have written anything that had any chance of coming to light if they believed that there would be any repercussions. Although often pictured as bumbling halfwits, these guys are smart enough to know that war crimes trials are very unlikely. Lots of Democrats are complicit, and Obama doesn’t want it.